Books like Tabula Rasa — picked by fans

From the country’s capital, the city’s journalists translated political power and social news – as well as a thriving social scene. They covered stories that were shared across the country. A mix of men and women, big names and freelancers, these journalists reveals behind-the-scenes reporting and relationships. The stories reveal how and why news is made. These watchdogs of government were often intertwined with politicians professionally and sometimes personally. This book offers a helpful understanding of Washington, D.C. journalism – and is highly entertaining.

I worked in local papers at the start of my career and was always amazed at why a network that had so many talented writers produced so few books about the hilarious things and the tragic things we experienced. I think it's partly because local newspapers are often seen as a stepping stone, we focus on the famous at the pinnacle of their career, editing a national newspaper for example, when in fact local news careers could and should be an end in themselves.

Roger Lytollis is not only a brilliant writer, but his book is remarkably personal in the way he faces his own demons and how journalism helped him cope with extreme shyness and depression. Coupled with hilarious stories, I couldn't put it down.

Brilliant Bylines is more than a historical narrative of women in journalism, as it also includes samples of the women's writings.

My favorite is Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, better known as "Nellie Bly." She was not unknown, but she was mysterious in her own way and certainly was intriguing. Not only did she travel around the world in 1890, but she also feigned mental illness in order to get the inside scoop on an insane asylum. I named another cat after her, as well.

If fictional journalists are your thing, then this book will almost certainly introduce you to some you’ve never heard of as well as those you (really should) have. Lonsdale insightfully identifies and dissects themes that crop up time after time in creative writing about journalists, from swashbuckling rogues to unethical scumbags. In the process, she has plenty to say about the craft of journalism itself and its enduring value to society. There is humour too, as when she quotes the immortal line of Stella Gibbons (author of Cold Comfort Farm): "The life of the journalist is poor, nasty, brutish and short. So is his style." Lovely.

For anyone who has ever struggled with or merely wanted to hone their abilities to craft a compelling story structure, Franklin’s book is a gem. Examples taken from Franklin’s own Pulitzer Prize-winning work adds an instructive clarity that allows the reader to step inside the decision-making process that went into some of his most lauded work. Any writer—fiction, nonfiction, academic—can use this book to up their storytelling game.

The stories my agencies create have probably appeared in some form in every major and most minor publications worldwide. A single-viral story can be repeated thousands of times in the media landscape. But no publication that we work for has paid as much as the Daily Mail. It may be hated by many, but journalists love it. It pays the best rates, and this book was a fascinating insight into my biggest customer.

My work for them was what made me a target of BuzzFeed because not only is it hated in some quarters, but it's the biggest news organization in the world, and many want to see it toppled. The book also featured many people I knew, like the legendary Allan Hall, who once punched the editor.

I had the privilege of talking with Angèle at an event and discussing our different book projects.

The wonderful thing about this book it is reveals that the interaction between technology and journalism is incredibly culturally specific. We tend to think that every newsroom engages with technology in the same way, but Angèle shows that long-standing national journalistic cultures influence how technologies are adopted and used.

The book is also an ethnography, which means that it offers a wonderful insight into the day-to-day practices of the newsroom.

First published in 1990 – based on a series of articles originally written for The New Yorker, this book is a warning to true crime authors the world over about the morality of reaching out and writing with and about murderers. 

The journalist in question is Joe McGinniss and the murderer is the former Special Forces Captain Dr Jeffrey MacDonald who became the subject of McGinniss’s 1983 book Fatal Vision. Is it ethical to collaborate with someone who has been accused of murder? What are the pitfalls that need to be managed? And, at the end of the day, who is conning who – the journalist or the murderer?

This is primarily the story of three newspapers--James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald, Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, and the merged paper under the ownership of diplomat and politician Whitelaw Reid and his heirs, including his daughter-in-law, Helen Rogers Reid, a firecracker of an executive and woman about town. But it is also a comprehensive story of New York newspapering from the 1830s to the 1960s and about the city and country that served as the focus for news coverage during those decades. It is a poignant tale of soaring triumphs and ultimate decline as new challenges beset the newspaper business and even large cities could no longer support multiple papers.

As a former professor of sociology and media studies at the University of Virginia, I was (and, of course, remain!) interested in the history of communication. In this book, I discovered the backstory to the creation of well-known documents that fueled the American Revolution and fostered lively debate in the ensuing decades.

I also enjoyed reading about writers, publishers, and printers (often, one and the same) whose literary works raised mudslinging to an art form and deepened divisions that threatened to upend the grand experiment of democracy in its infancy. But somehow, the incendiary press of the late eighteenth century became “the basis of a humane and enduring society.”